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Friday, August 1, 2014

A day at YALC--a post by Gemma

What’s YALC? Well, it's the first ever UK Young Adult Literature
Convention, curated by Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman and organised by Booktrust, with help from
a team of publicists from across children’s publishing.

The event took place over two days during the London Film and Comic Con 2014
at Earls Court (a place I’m normally familiar with during London Book Fair –
much more fun to see queues of people in cosplay, I can tell you).

I attended on the Sunday, and I didn’t know what I was expecting
from the day, but queuing in the mammoth early-bird line, I really did feel
like I was amongst my people. I immediately spotted Lucy Ivison, author of LOBSTERS
(which if you haven’t read, you MUST), and we chatted about which panels we were
looking forward to and speakers we were hoping to meet. Once inside, we bumped
into a big group of my favourite bloggers all waiting for the Bloggers Brunch –
it’s always fun to catch up with bloggers and hear which new releases they’re
excited about. And I loved that so many of them were carrying giant heavy bags of
books for signing – in the intense heat of Earls Court, that was a true
commitment!

Love, Lies and Lemon Pies by Katy Cannon

The space at the back of the venue was a fantastic haven
from the bustle of the aisles and signing queues. Something about seeing the
wall of books and giant beanbags was instantly calming, and I could have spent
all day just hanging out in the chillout area and catching up with friends.

I attended many of the panels, and there are some great
writeups out there from people who took better notes than me – the best one
from Megan Quibell in the Guardian.
However, I do have to mention my favourite panel, ‘I’m Too Sexy for This Book,’
a frank discussion about sex in YA from authors Non Pratt, Cat Clarke, and Beth Reekles and chaired by James Dawson. I don’t
think I’ve ever laughed more during an author event (James may be Queen of Teen, but Non is
surely Queen of Innuendo). It was a lot of fun, but the serious takeaway from
the talk is that teenagers have sex and YA books are about teenagers, so if it
feels right for the book, then it’s okay to for your characters to have sex and
have this shown in a positive way. Kids are very good at self-censoring and often
know when a book is too much for them.

The fantastic 'I'm Too Sexy for This Book' panel

It was great to see TBA client love at the event. Katy
Cannon’s LOVE, LIES AND LEMON PIES was on the book wall, alongside SPLINTEREDby A G Howard. Also, there were lots of
posters for ENSNARED, the third book in the trilogy. And I spotted bookmarks
and swag for Kat Ellis’ wonderful debut, BLACKFIN SKY.

Ensnared by A.G. Howard - coming Jan 2015

Other highlights for me was meeting one of my favourite
authors, Robert Rankin, and getting a signed book. Also, I was kindly asked to
take part on an agents’ speed-pitching event at the end of the day, and it was
fun to see a different type of book than those I usually see at
SCBWI events or in my slush. Mostly though, my big takeaway was that book
people are the nicest people (I knew this already) and that there is a real
hunger for UK YA. It’s an exciting time!

A big thank you to Katherine Woodfine and her team for organising, and
all the volunteers who made the event run so smoothly. I do hope this isn’t the
last we see of YALC!

There were many fantastic write ups of YALC from bloggers and
authors - here is a link to some of my favourites: